Winding Road
by sakayume
Summary: [TORISHISHI] Shishido had always found Valentine's Day an annoying but inevitable occurence


**Winding Road**

_Joining in on the Hyoutei fun nya~_

Disclaimer.  Not mine.  Obviously.  Otherwise they'd be having lots of gratuitous on-screen sex by now and there wouldn't be a need for fanfiction. XD

Shounen ai.

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Shishido _hated_ the Hyoutei locker room.

Not only did it seem to be _the_ place for Oshitari and Gakuto to engage in kinky pre/post-game make out sessions (as if they did not already have their own off-campus apartment) — once was more than enough to traumatise poor Shishido for life, let alone the countless number of times he had actually been unfortunate enough to walk in on the pair.  They seemed to derive some perverse _joy_ in seeing his traumatised (and highly disturbed) expression — but the locker room meant teasing and smirking.  And more smirking.  All generally directed towards him and once again courtesy of the Oshitari and Gakuto doubles pair, who seemed to have refined both down to an art form where Shishido was concerned.  He had told them quite rudely once to find a new object of entertainment, but that had only caused both of them to smirk (although in Gakuto's case it made him resemble a cat that had just gotten its paws into cream) and Gakuto to declare quite certainly that there was nobody as "_fun_ as the resident drama queen".

Ohtori standing next to him — shirtless — was yet another reason for Shishido to dislike the locker room.

Shishido quickly averted his gaze down to his tennis bag lying open before him.  Not that Ohtori would ever notice Shishido ogling at him.  His doubles partner was just too naïve and oblivious — it was kind of cute, actually — about this sort of thing for the thought to even remotely cross his mind.  That did not mean it escaped the notice of the rest of the team, who were really all too sharp-eyed for their own good.

Shishido was halfway through throwing random items from his bag haphazardly into his locker when the unwelcome and all too familiar sound of Gakuto snickering made him stop and turn to glare at the redhead.

"What?" he demanded shortly, sending his snickering teammate a glare that was ignored as usual.

Gakuto, _damn him_, only snickered some more as he smirked that infuriating smirk of his.  "You _do_ realise that everyone else is packing up to go home?"

Shishido glanced back at his locker and swore silently, only now realising what he had been doing.  He turned back to Gakuto intending on giving the flexible acrobatic tennis player his best lofty glare (though really such things were Atobe's forte, not his), and saw that even their egomaniac buchou was smirking amusedly at him from where he was doing whatever buchou things he could not foist onto Kabaji.  Shishido had never really liked — like and respect were two different things after all, and so was lust really — Atobe and hence never paid much attention to whatever his buchou did.

He settled for glaring impartially at all of them, minus Ohtori and Jirou — the former had a cutely confused expression across his face whilst the latter was sleeping.  Again.  And Hiyoshi who was minding his own business as usual in his own corner.  Sometimes it was so easy to forget he was there.  Cursing inwardly, he shoved all the contents of his locker just as haphazardly back into his bag.  Thank goodness Ohtori had finished with his shirt and was onto his tie.  Although the sight of Ohtori fiddling with his tie was enough to make Shishido want to go over and tie it for him.

The plastic sound of a hollow object hitting the floor made Shishido tear his eyes off the side profile of his doubles partner and reminded him that he was out of grip tape.  And unfortunately in the Hyoutei locker room.

"Hey Choutarou, wanna go to the tennis shop on Saturday?" Shishido asked casually as he bent down to pick the offending object off the floor and chuck it into the nearby trash can instead where it hit the inside of the metal bin with a satisfying clunk.

Utter silence descended over the locker room.  Even the sound of Gakuto whining (no doubt as he tugged on Oshitari's sleeve, Shishido thought wryly) stopped.  Unnerved though slightly relieved, Shishido stood up eyeing the room full of regulars suspiciously.

They were all staring at him in a not so good way.  Minus Jirou who was of course still asleep and would be until Atobe woke him up — despite feeling highly disturbed at this point, some still rational part of Shishido's brain noted the strange absence of Kabaji.  He supposed he had not noticed the second year's absence earlier because Kabaji hardly ever said anything other than "usu"… and that only when faced with yet another of their buchou's seemingly endless commands.  Other than Kabaji though, it seemed like Atobe was the only one capable of waking Jirou up.  Although Shishido had to admit that Atobe did it _far_ more effectively than Kabaji.  There was no dangling upside down or shaking, not that Atobe would have deigned to do such a thing.  Just a simple touch and Jirou would bounce up, wide awake.  Shishido would hardly have believed it if he hadn't seen so for himself several times.

His teammates were _still_ staring at him.

_Oh shit!_  Staring people equalled not good.

"Err…?" Shishido raised an eyebrow uncertainly at them, annoyance rapidly getting the better of him as it usually did when people stared wordlessly at him.  Or in basically any situation involving Hyoutei's other regular doubles pair.

Even Ohtori was looking at him, blinking and blushing slightly in the way that was cute but which also meant that he had said something.

Staring doubles partner equalled _very_ not good.

"Uh, Shishido-san, Saturday is the fourteenth…" Ohtori began before he was drowned out by Gakuto's helpless laughter.

Shishido shot a poisonous look that promised glorious amounts of grievous bodily harm to the redhead rolling on the floor laughing uncontrollably.  This was definitely not turning out to be his day.  "So?"

Oshitari sighed and pushed up his glasses with a long-suffering 'why me?' look to the ceiling.  "February fourteenth is Valentine's Day," his voice sounded way too amused as he casually prodded his shaking doubles partner on the floor.

"… Oh."

_Right._

How was he supposed to know?  Sure, he knew that girls liked to give chocolates to the guys they liked and this generally happened on certain days of the year.  And being one of Hyoutei's number one bishounen (he would never admit that Atobe always edged him out in the popularity poll) _and_ on the famous Hyoutei tennis team to boot, Shishido always received more than his fair share of usually unwelcome chocolates and gifts.  But the giggling girls had been mostly an annoyance and it had never occurred to him to remember the date or reason his shoebox was overflowing with gifts on any one particular day of the year.  It had always been an inevitable but annoying occurrence.  After all there was a price to being pretty.

Gakuto burst into fresh peals of laughter.  As far as Shishido could tell between the laughter and gasps of breath, it was something about his expression "being comical".

Needless to say, it took both Oshitari and Ohtori to prevent Shishido from sending Gakuto on a painful one way trip out of the locker room for the third time that day.

_Owari__ (or maybe tsuzuku?)___

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**Author's Notes**

Don't listen to Shishido if he comes complaining to you that he's been abused.  The Ning da bribed him with his Choutarou. XD

As with most of my other stuff (actually _all_ *sweatdrop*) this was written quite literally in the middle of the night so please forgive any crappiness, lameness and cheesiness.  My brain thinks less straight at odd hours. XD That said, it was great fun to write although the Ning da feels bad for tormenting Shishido so.  Well, not really. XD Certainly not bad enough to rule out a continuation.

The title stems from their relationship going to be a _long_ and winding (and bumpy) road if Shishido continues like this. XD


End file.
